“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Something’s happened,” Minty Fresh says. He hesitates and looks at Valerie, one of those best-friend glances loaded with meaning, in this case probably something like Do you want to tell him or should I?
“I’m actually on my way out, so maybe we could make this kinda quick?” says Oliver.
“It’s Althea,” Valerie says. “Something happened at school today. She was still in Nelson’s office when we left; I think they were trying to find her dad, but we’re pretty sure she’s going to get expelled.”
Oliver puts up his arms like he’s fending off an attack. “Stop right there.”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“Not another word. Whatever it is, whatever she did, I don’t want to know.”
“You’re going to have to hear about this sooner or later,” Valerie says.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you and Althea in a fight or something?”
“Something,” says Oliver.
“Does it have anything to do with Coby?” Minty asks.
“What does Coby have to do with anything?”
Valerie and Minty Fresh have another of their silent exchanges. Without his permission, Oliver’s brain starts sorting and compiling information—Althea, expulsion, Coby—and presenting him with possible scenarios involving these three elements. The results sound like the titles of dysfunctional children’s stories: Althea and Coby and the Aborted Arson Attempt. Althea and Coby and the Locker Full of Pills. Althea and Coby and the Inevitable Felony Charges. “Never mind. I said I don’t want to know, and I mean it.”
“We’re really worried about her,” Valerie says. “Can’t you at least talk to her, make sure that she’s okay?”
“Fuck her if she’s overwhelmed by the trappings of her totally normal adolescence,” he yells, dodging Valerie’s outstretched, sympathetic hand. “And just shut the fuck up about Althea and Coby. As far as I’m concerned they can have each other.” His eyes have filled.
“Oh, Oliver,” Valerie says, putting her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck off,” he says, sniffling. “You and your pigtails.”
“What’s with the luggage?” Minty asks, noticing Oliver’s duffel.
“I’m going away.” Grasping the strap of his bag, Oliver reminds himself of his own story, The Mysterious Case of Oliver’s Medical Problems. This is the only one that interests him now.
“Where?” Valerie presses.
Here’s what Oliver had imagined: slipping away undetected. His absence gradually dawning on everyone, who would initially assume, with reason, that he was just home sick with another episode. Eventually someone—Althea, of course—would come by the house and find it empty. No Oliver, no Nicky. The school knew where he was going, had instructions to send him his assignments, but none of his teachers would volunteer the information, and it might be weeks before anybody thought to ask. And in the meantime, they—Althea, really—would have no idea where he was, and yes, as juvenile as it was, he hoped this uncertain time would be spent reflecting on her mistreatment and underappreciation of Oliver McKinley.
It hadn’t started that way. He hadn’t mentioned the study in New York to anyone because it would have undermined all his efforts to act like everything was normal. Then, after the show at Lucky’s, when he was finally trying to screw up his courage to tell Althea he was leaving in two days, she had dropped the sleep-fucking bomb and made it clear that the Normal ship had sailed months ago. After all his anxiety about telling her, knowing it would send her into a rage that he hadn’t mentioned it sooner, he ended up screaming at her for a change and was surprised to find the act intensely cathartic. This bit of insight, however, had been eclipsed by his disgust at her. And now, as he’s about to make his quietly melodramatic exit from Wilmington, she’s apparently one-upped him again.
“There’s a doctor in New York. He wants to check me in to the hospital for a while.”
“Oh,” Valerie says.
“When will you be back?” asks Minty Fresh.
The taxi pulls into the driveway and honks.
“I don’t know. Don’t tell Althea, okay?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to know what happened today?” Valerie asks.
“Of course I want to know. That doesn’t mean I want you to tell me.”
• • •
LaGuardia Airport doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would send a person on a visceral nostalgia trip, but Oliver is still surprised to see Nicky emerge from the terminal into the chilly November evening without so much as a sentimental glance in either direction. He’s in a daze himself, head still aching from the plane’s dry recycled air. The last time he was on an airplane—the first time, really—he went to visit Mack’s parents in California, but that was a long flight, and there had been time to make the mental transition from east coast to west. This trip was only a couple of hours, not nearly long enough to prepare himself.
Nicky, on the other hand, is all business, waiting in line at the taxi stand, hustling Oliver into a cab, and giving the driver directions as if she disembarks from planes here all the time. The inside of the taxi smells like vinyl and sweat; there’s a miniature ear of Indian corn hanging from the rearview mirror in anticipation of Thanksgiving.
Settling back into his seat, Oliver tries to mask his excitement and mirror Nicky’s indifference instead. But as they hurtle toward Manhattan, the skyline growing larger above them until they disappear into a tunnel underneath it, he’s heedlessly optimistic. Wilmington had seemed big until Althea got her car and they realized they could traverse the entire city in fifteen or twenty minutes. New York fills Oliver with a sharp, euphoric hope. Looking at this city now, grasping its size and scope—someone here is going to be able to help him. He indulges that thought as their cab sits in traffic, the buildings rising around them like cliffs. He thinks about being able to make promises, saying “Yes, I’ll be there” without having to add the “unless.”
The cab driver leans on the horn, with no discernible effect. Nicky reaches across the backseat to rest a hand on Oliver’s neck, keeping her eyes on the meter.
After they check in to the hotel near the hospital, Nicky insists they go out to dinner. At home they hardly ever eat in restaurants. Even if they could afford to, Nicky prefers the womblike environs of Magnolia Street, where she can drink her wine and her tea and smoke at leisure. But the hotel has that sterile feeling that makes her insane—the air freshener smell, the printed strips around the toilet seat, the pillows that crinkle like they’re filled with newspapers. She asks him if he would like to have sushi, real sushi, not the boxed kind they buy sometimes in the supermarket. He almost asks for pizza instead. She’s gone on about New York pizza for his entire life, slices so floppy and enormous you have to fold them in half and wolf them down while the oil runs up your wrist. But they passed enough pizzerias in the taxi for Oliver to realize it’s the kind of meal you eat in five minutes perched on a plastic stool. Nicky’s looking like, for once, she could do with a little more ceremony.
At the restaurant, Nicky acts like he’s never even seen a California roll. She shows him how to break apart his wooden chopsticks and rub them together to smooth out the splinters. She explains that he’s supposed to eat the pickled ginger by itself to cleanse his palate, not drape it over each piece of fish like that idiot at the next table. When she starts to explain what the wasabi is and how much of it he should eat with each bite—“Do not rub it around in your dish of soy sauce, you will embarrass us both”—he loses his patience.
“Mom, I understand wasabi. I’ve seen it, I’ve ingested it. We’re old friends, wasabi and me. Relax.”
There’s a candle on their table, flickering inside its smoky votive, and a shallow waterfall built into the wall behind Nicky, whispering a steady cascade fr
om the ceiling to the floor. The combination has a hypnotic effect. She fiddles with her chopsticks. In her favorite red sweater with her hair loose around her shoulders, the candlelight soft on her face, she is still sort of beautiful, Oliver has to admit, and he wishes there were more waiting for her in North Carolina than a sink full of dirty dishes and a roster of clients who want their chakras opened through the healing power of massage.
“How long are you going to stick around?” he asks her.
“A few days. I’ll spend some time with Sarah and Jimmy. It’s been too long since I’ve seen them. I guess I’ll have to go out to New Jersey to see my parents.” She sighs, clearly unenthused by the prospect. “Anyway, I’ll wait until you’re all settled in and then I’ll head back to Wilmington.”
“You and Sarah got big plans?”
“We’re not going to take acid, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Why don’t you move back here?” he asks.
“To New York?”
“Yeah.”
“And where will you live?”
“I mean, after.” He wants to say after I go off to college, but that’s a big question mark for now. “Once I move out, eventually.”
She blows into her teacup and stares at the ripples. “I don’t know.”
“I think you need to spend some time around people your own age.”
“You’re not in a position to be giving advice, my son.”
“Don’t you think Dad would say the same thing?”
Nicky sets her tea aside and pours a cup of hot sake from the carafe. “It’s not so easy to consult your father on these matters, considering he’s been dead for ten years.”
“That’s what I mean. He’s been dead for ten years.”
Nicky smiles. “Are you worried about me? Is that it? You think I’m lonely?”
“Never mind.” He rattles the ice in his water glass, the sound reminding him instantly of Garth.
“Of course I’m lonely sometimes. But you know what?” She gestures around the restaurant with her chopsticks, singling out a couple her age eating their sushi in silence. The husband drops his piece into the dish of soy sauce and it splatters all over his blue button-down shirt. His wife shakes her head while he dabs at the stain with a wet napkin. “They don’t look particularly happy, do they?”
Oliver follows his mother’s utensils as she points out other people—another couple, younger, is holding hands under their table, but across from them their friend is compulsively tucking the same piece of hair behind her ear and watching the door, bowing her head slightly when the waiter comes by and clears the fourth, unused place setting.
“What about her?” Oliver asks. In the corner, a girl in her twenties is sitting alone, holding a book open with one hand and deftly maneuvering a glass of wine toward her mouth without looking. Setting the wine down, she turns a page, then eats a single piece of sushi, chewing it slowly, resting her chopsticks on her plate. After a moment she takes another sip of wine, smiling at something she just read.
Nicky refills her cup. “When she goes to bed tonight, she’s not going to lie there wondering if she said the right thing. And at the end of the day, there’s not a lot of people who can say that.”
“You think that will be enough for you? For the next forty years?” His voice is abruptly unkind.
“Why are you harping on this tonight? You think after you move out I’m going to start taking in stray cats just to have someone to talk to? I’m going to start spying on the neighbors and stealing their recyclables just to keep myself busy?”
“I guess I’ve assumed that going crazy was always part of your plan.”
“And you’re the only thing standing between me and insanity? I’m touched, Ol, thank you for keeping the darkness at bay all these years.” She throws back the rest of her drink.
“Maybe you should take it easy on the rice wine,” he says.
“Maybe you should take it easy on your mother.” She plays with a lock of her hair. “I’m not saying I don’t see your point. The other day, Sarah asked me what I thought the rest would be like. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She said, ‘The rest of our lives. What do you think it will be like?’ And I honestly didn’t know. Another forty years is a long time to spend in Wilmington. But the idea of living here again, but alone this time . . . I don’t know.”
Oliver’s memories of his father—Mack, she had called him, short for McKinley, even though his first name was Charles—have faded to a corduroy jacket that smelled like tobacco, being pushed high on a playground swing, onions and garlic sizzling in a pan on the stove. There was a dog then, too, an enormous mountain dog named Jeremiah that loved to knock Oliver over and lick his face to pieces. Mack and that dog went everywhere together.
Mack is still real to Nicky. Even after ten years, her memories of him are vivid enough to haunt or amuse her, depending on her mood. And Oliver feels guilty sometimes. With so little to remember, there is not much to miss, and Nicky grieves alone for the husband and father Oliver wouldn’t know if he saw him now. And sometimes he’s angry that she hoards her memories, that she hasn’t kept Mack alive more for Oliver, the last tiny piece of him that’s left. In the end, the guilt and anger are always fleeting, because it’s pointless. Nicky is Nicky and Mack is gone; the dog ran away after he died; Oliver grew up without a father and doesn’t know life any other way.
“Am I anything like him?” he asks.
“You’re everything like him,” Nicky says softly, tipping the carafe over her cup and finding it empty.
He stares at the waterfall behind her. Right after Mack died and the McKinleys were halved, down the street Althea’s mother was packing her bags, cleaving her own family. At six years old, a pair of twins was born. The other day at the coffee shop, the cashier looked past Oliver before taking his order, waiting for Althea to appear. She’d never seen them apart. There’s no picture of Althea in his duffel bag, none of her sketches pressed between the pages of his notebooks. No one in New York will even know that she exists.
“I just don’t want you to end up like Mrs. Parker, sweeping the sidewalk in some ugly housecoat,” he says.
“What if it’s a vintage housecoat?” she says, flagging down the waiter and holding up the empty carafe, indicating she’s ready for another. “What if it’s something really kicky?”
• • •
The doctor is wearing too much hair product. He’s too tall, too young, and too handsome, and immediately Oliver is distrustful. Oliver likes a doctor with a robust head of white hair and tortoiseshell glasses, the easy, comfortable trappings of seniority. This guy looks less like a doctor than like an actor hired to play one. Nicky waits outside while Dr. Curls gives Oliver a thorough physical.
“So, you came all the way from North Carolina?”
“That’s right,” Oliver says.
“How do you like it down there?”
“It’s fine. I guess I don’t really have much to compare it to.” He squints as the doctor shines a light in his eyes.
“First time in New York?”
“For me, yeah.”
“Your mom’s been here before?”
“My mom used to live here. In Alphabet City.” It’s a new low, leaning on his mother’s past for credibility.
Dr. Curls makes a brief, Muppet-like noise to indicate that he’s impressed. “So you’re, what, a senior in high school?”
“Yeah.”
Blowing on his stethoscope, the doctor reaches under Oliver’s paper gown to listen to his heartbeat, then moves the stethoscope to Oliver’s back. “Take a deep breath.”
When he’s finished with the exam, the doctor sits on the rolling stool and looks up at Oliver, perched on the table with his bare legs dangling. “So, how many of these sleep episodes have you had so far?”
“Three.”
>
“And what do you remember about the events leading up to the first one?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Most KLS patients experience some sort of incident before their first episode. It could be an injury, maybe a head trauma or just a night of heavy drinking. Anything like that happen?”
“I guess you could say there was an incident,” he tells Dr. Curls, recalling the night of the Jell-O wrestling party. “Beer. Stress. Sleep deprivation.”
“All right,” says the doctor. “What do you say you go change and then we have a seat in my office and talk to your mom about what happens now?”
• • •
Oliver’s given his own hospital room, modified to accommodate the length of his stay. There’s a twin bed, a nightstand with a gooseneck reading lamp, a small wooden dresser missing several of its drawer pulls, a plain desk with various profanities etched into its surface, and a chair. The desk reminds Oliver of his first days at elementary school, being assigned his seat and seeing the work of the previous occupants, how shocking the expletives seemed at first but how staring at them day after day took away their power to unnerve him. He has his own bathroom with a shower, no tub, a plastic shower curtain instead of a glass door. There are various pieces of medical equipment next to the bed. Every night before he goes to sleep, a nurse comes in to tether him to these monitors and machines; in the morning, a different nurse comes in and unhooks him, followed by the doctors.
During the day he’s free to hang out with the other KLS patients in a common room not unlike that of a mental ward—cigarette-scarred couches, a TV, clipboard-wielding nurses on the periphery. The study is composed solely of teenage boys, the most common sufferers of Kleine-Levin Syndrome. A tutor comes in the afternoons to help them with their schoolwork, but beyond that their days are devoid of any structure. As a result, the lounge has taken on the atmosphere of a fraternity house, a keg party without the beer. For months or years these boys have been the only ones in their towns or cities—“or even states,” boasts the boy from Alaska with the shiny black hair—who could lay claim to this disease. Now there are more than a dozen of them, comrades thrown together, constantly sprawled out in the lounge, legs flung over the arms of their chairs or holding one another’s feet for sit-ups, bonding hastily in a semi-simian manner. Having spent his formative years primarily in the company of Nicky and Althea, Oliver is ill at ease in such a heavily male environment. The public ball-scratching, the incessant discussion of bodily functions, the flippant assessments of the female nurses—he is poorly versed in these fraternal machinations. Most of the time, he stays in his room, breezing through the AP physics assignments from school, reading graphic novels and A Brief History of Time and listening to Parklife on his Discman.
Althea and Oliver Page 13
